Cake and Treat Boxes

Baking and sweet making for two events – My Mum’s Birthday next week, and my friend’s 40th.

I am heading to York at the weekend to stay over at my friend’s house and take her for a spa day as an early birthday celebration. It is also my mum’s birthday at the start of next week, so I used both occasions as a reason to try some recipes and put together some treat boxes.

I used some recipes that are my own, and then others that I got from other bakers for inspiration (linked when I used someone else’s recipe)

Lemon Cakesicles

These were made using offcuts of a cake I made earlier this month. I crumbled the cake into crumbs and then mixed it with lemon buttercream and lemon curd. I use a silicon mold to shape the cake into the popsicle shape, and let them freeze. Once ready, they were coated in white chocolate that was coloured with some pink and yellow oil-based colouring to get the marble effect.

I have cakesicle boxes which I popped them into as they look a tad nicer:

Carrot Cake Truffles

I made a small carrot cake using 1/3 of this loaf recipe from Jane’s Patisseie. The cake was then just crumbled up and mixed with some ginger conserve and cream cheese to form the truffle filling. I rolled into balls, then put in the freezer to solidify. Once ready, I melted whote chocolate to coat them and finished with biscuit crumbs.

Vanilla Sugar Cookie Flowers

This recipe came directly from Chelsweets and worked amazingly well.

It’s quite a “simple” recipe, that ends up looking so cute. The longest time was rolling the small balls of dough, but it was worth it.

I finished by Cookies by adding some edible “paint” (as above) but they look just as nice without the shiny parts too:

Fudge

When I make treat boxes, I nearly always make easy-fudge recipes. This time I used one can of condensed milk to make 2 different versions.

I separated them in a baking tin with some foil and greaseproof paper so I didn’t have to wash as many pans.

White Chocolate Speculoos Fudge:
– 250g White Chocolate
– 199g Condensed Milk
– Crushed speculoos buscuits

Milk Chocolate Orange Fudge with Oreo Pieces
– 225g Milk Chocolate
– 199g Condensed Milk
– Oreo Cookie Crumbles

It’s a really easy recipe as all you do is melt the chocolate & add the condensed milk & fillings before chilling for 6 hours+. This was the two blocks taken straight out of the tin before I cut into squares:

Meringue Hearts & Chicks

I used the idea from Chelsweets from her Easter cookie boxes, but used a vegan meringue recipe from Loving it Vegan as I had aquafaba to use.

I love these cute little guys!

I tried to make some pink hearts (that didn’t quite look as I pictured them in my head) so I painted a purple heart on top too.

I LOVED how the chicks turned out, even though I did forget to give them wings! Here is everything before going into the oven

And how things looked when they had baked & cooled:

I’ve put together 2 large treat boxes, 2 small ones, and still had loads spare for eating / sharing which are just in a tub:

Pretty Retirement Cupcakes

My mum retires this month and has a retirement lunch with her workmates today so I made her cakes to take along.

They are lemon and raspberry cupcakes with edible flowers. They’re all a combination of:

  • Lemon or raspberry cake
  • Lemon or raspberry buttercream
  • Lemon curd or raspberry conserve
  • Crushed (homemade) meringue and raspberry powder
  • Edible flowers

I ended up with spare buttercream, so I made a few more for people to share this week too:

Happy Retirement, Mum!

Vegan Meringue

I am making some cupcakes that required a meringue shell to use for decoration. I had used some chickpeas earlier this week for a curry, but kept the aquafaba (chickpea water) to use to make meringues. I’d not done this for a while, so looked for a recipe online and found this one from Loving it Vegan which works perfectly!

As I was only using the meringue to crush up, I just plopped the mixture into blobs on my baking trays

And they baked AMAZINGLY

I had loads spare, so decided I’d take some to family this weekend. I dipped some in dark chocolate:

and then I sandwiched a few of those with leftover “buttercream” from the Severance cake I did this week too:

That’s the random mix all boxed up to give away tomorrow.
– “Plain” (vanilla) meringue shells
– Chocolate meringue shells
– Sandwiched chocolate meringue shells

Severance Themed Birthday Cake

My friend is 40 today. He’s the penultimate person in our quiz-friend group to turn 40, with me being the last one next month. We all have a love for the TV show, Severance, so I decided to make a cake for his birthday based on this.

I usually lack my own ideas and look to the internet for inspiration… but there were so few out there! I had to use my own imagination.

The front of the cake / balloon was based on a TV poster for season 2:

I then went for the “numbers” for the rear of the cake.

The cake itself was verrrrrryyyyy soft. I ussed plant butter for the buttercream (just as it’s so much cheaper than butter) but I added some liquid to it like I do with usual buttercream and this led to a very soft consistency. It held shape, but it did not hold up to being sliced with a butter knife at the pub. At least it tasted AMAZING!

Postman Retirement Cake & Cupcakes

One of my work colleagues reached out to me to ask if I could make a retirement cake for her husband who had retired from Royal Mail after working there for 47 years! I agreed to give it a go.

I started by originally coming up with the below, very poor, mock-up of a cake based on various other cakes I’d found online.

We agreed with the “usual” cake – vanilla sponge, strawberry jam, and vanilla buttercream. The toppers could be whatever I fancied so I went with cartoony postman (one from when he started and one from retiring) and decorations made from fondant.

To go with the main cake, there was also 48 cupcakes. Again, I was told to go with whatever flavours I fancied so we did:

12 x Chocolate
12 x Vanilla
12 x Cookies & Cream
12 x Lemon

The cupcakes were all made with a vegan recipe too so that most people could enjoy cake:

The cakes were topped with flavoured buttercream (made with plant butter) and both edible and non-edible decorations.

I got the post-themed ones from e-bay as they were printed on edible icing paper.

To avoid the toppers from wilting, I made fondant discs to sit between the toppers and the buttercream, and added the toppers just before delivery to keep them as fresh as possible.

Here’s some shots of the fondant decorations “drying out” before being added to the cake.